IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Keystone XL pipeline moves one step closer to approval; Britain pummeled by record rain and floods; Another coal-related spill contaminates drinking water, this time in North Carolina; PLUS: The Arctic wins again --- for now --- as Shell Oil drops plans to drill this summer ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Duke Energy said Monday that 50,000 to 82,000 tons of coal ash and up to 27 million gallons of water were released from a pond at its retired power plant in Eden into the Dan River, and were still flowing.

The decision came as Shell reported a steep drop in earnings and its new CEO announced plans to restructure operations to improve the company's cash flow. CEO Ben van Beurden cited last week's court ruling that threw offshore Arctic oil leases into question.

The Department’s responsibility, under Executive Order 13337, is to determine if granting a permit for the proposed pipeline would serve the national interest....Consistent with the Executive Order, this involves consideration of many factors, including energy security, health, environmental, cultural, economic, and foreign policy concerns.

State now recognizes there are conditions in which Keystone XL would enable substantial climate emissions. With respect to water, the State Department acknowledges that large leaks on Keystone XL could go undetected and that tar sands spills constitute unique risks to water resources. And the environmental reviews shows that most of the tar sands flowing through Keystone XL will be exported and very few jobs will be created.

The Australian agency tasked with managing the Great Barrier Reef has authorized what amounts to an experiment opposed by many scientists: how the iconic ecosystem will respond to mountains of sludge dumped into the waters between the reef and the Australian mainland.

[T]his sounds like the industry talking—why wouldn’t we seek to further regulate all toxic substances on our foods, whether organic or not, rather than concluding we might as well eat the conventional foods?... When Moyers says that pesticides are “perfectly healthy for kids,” she doesn’t specify whose kids.

Just outside the Olympic Park in Sochi, where the Winter Games open on Friday, is a green space with benches, artificial ponds and a couple of hides. 'Ornithological Park', the sign declares. The problem is that there is not a bird in sight in the park, which was set up as a replacement for sensitive wetlands that were covered over for the construction of Games venues.

Quite possibly, you've noticed some new food labels out there, like 'Not made with genetically modified ingredients' or 'GMO-free.' You might have seen them on boxes of Cheerios, or on chicken meat. If you've shopped at Whole Foods, that retailer says that it now sells more than 3,000 products that have been certified as 'non-GMO.'

Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.

Nations have so dragged their feet in battling climate change that the situation has grown critical and the risk of severe economic disruption is rising, according to a draft United Nations report. Another 15 years of failure to limit carbon emissions could make the problem virtually impossible to solve with current technologies, experts found.